Lizard Girl & Ghost

by Olga Werby

  “Sure,” I say. “Did anyone else get sick?”

  “Some of Doc’s friends, but nothing as severe as—” He doesn’t finish, but I know he means me.

  “How many kids got sick?” I ask, but I can guess the answer. Pixie, Slick, Sleazy, and Doc. Four. Four kids were exposed. And me. What does that mean?

  “Just a few kids from school. Doc’s friends,” Dad confirms. “Remember we watched the news report about the epidemic?” No, I don’t remember. I feel cold, but try to stay focused on Dad’s voice, his face, his words. “But they’re all fine now,” he says, panic just below the surface. “You’re the only one still sick.”

  “I see.” I will have to figure out what that means later. “Tell me about Doc’s dad,” I insist again.

  “He was very upset when Bartholomew got sick.” I bet. “He’s worried about you, too,” Dad is quick to add.

  “Hmm. Actually, I wanted to know about Dr. Blake’s work, Dad. Tell me about what he does.”

  “I’m not sure, really. He works for a foundation that helps the most vulnerable members of our society gain access to cyberspace and extend their capabilities with virtual technology.” He sounds like a brochure. Dad might really not know anything. I’ve never considered that my dad might be uninformed about something—he always has the answers. “But if you’re asking about that stuff he did as a kid in high school—”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m asking.” I smile at him encouragingly.

  “Back then, Tom worked on something that ended up killing his best friend,” Dad says. He is still holding my hands. I feel him tremble when he mentions death. It must be hard on him, me being sick like this. “Tom met this kid, Roman, in middle school. Roman lived with his grandparents. His parents both died of ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” He glances at me to make sure I know what it is.

  “Dad! I’m not a complete idiot. I know about ALS. We talked about it at school. Stephen Hawking? He had it,” I say and roll my virtual eyes. I’m smarter than I look, even in cyberspace, regardless of the questionable volume of my mammary glands.

  “Of course, princess,” he smiles sadly at me. We are discussing a horrible death and becoming an orphan at a young age—something I know about—and he smiles because I can still be a smartass, even in a coma.

  “Go on, Dad.”

  “Tom said there was a very strong probability Roman was going to develop ALS, just like his parents. He had the genes for it. His family left Russia for France to seek treatment. When his parents died, Roman moved to the U.S. to be with his grandparents. When Tom met him, Roman was trying to find a solution before his body succumbed to the ravages of the disease. But why are we talking about this? I want—”

  “No, Daddy. Keep talking. I want to know about the solution Tom and Roman were looking for.”

  “Are you worried that you’ll need the same solution?” He looks at me, trying to figure out what I really want. “Roman was experiencing the early onset of ALS when the accident happened. But you’re strong and young. We believe you’ll get better,” he reassures me. “The doctors are all optimistic. Once the swelling in your brain goes down, you’ll be okay again.” Brain swelling? “You’ll be fine, I promise,” he adds. And I can see in his eyes that he believes it. I check Pixie’s reaction, and she shakes her head no. Okay then. Brain swelling.

  “I know that you and Dr. Blake and Claudia are doing everything you can for me. But I still want to know what happened to Roman. Did he find the cure?”

  “As far as I understand it,” Dad says, “he never really looked. Not in the way his parents did, anyway. He was searching for an alternative solution.”

  “Yes?”

  “He wanted to find a way of living his life out in cyberspace. He figured if he lost the freedom of movement in real life, he would still have it here, as an avatar. But it wasn’t a cure, Jude. He was still going to die of ALS eventually.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No,” Dad affirms. “He died in some freak accident in a lab. He had ALS. He wasn’t strong enough—” Dad doesn’t finish. I can see how painful talking about death, any death, is for him.

  “Did Dr. Blake continue that work?”

  “Yes. He even won a prize for it. Claudia knew both Tom and Roman. She met Roman in Paris several years before he moved to America. She was his babysitter.”

  “What?” This is completely unexpected. Claudia? Babysitter? The woman doesn’t have a nurturing bone in her body.

  “That’s how she met Tom, originally. She lived with Roman and his grandparents. I think she babysat for both of them, Tom and Roman.” Dad smiles a shy distant smile. “She’s a good woman,” he adds.

  “Who? Claudia?” I can’t believe what Dad is saying about Ms. Evil.

  “Tom said that she was obsessed with keeping Roman’s work alive. She insisted Tom continue it. She even started an institute in Roman’s memory—Immortality Unlimited.”

  “Doesn’t sound like an institute,” I say. I’m completely unwilling to believe anything good about that woman.

  “That’s what Roman called his project—no limits on life and prosperity, freedom from all disease and disability. Claudia was driven to make it work. I think that’s what finally destroyed their relationship—Tom couldn’t take it.”

  “And you?” I ask.

  “I love her passion,” Dad says. “But it’s not a competition,” he adds quickly, completely misunderstanding me. “I love you more than life itself, Jude. You never have to worry; you’ll always come first. You will always be my little princess.” He slides down and pulls me into a hug. I want to cry. Nothing is how I thought it was…is. Nothing.

  After awhile, he pulls away. He tells me that I have to rest. That he doesn’t want to use up all of my energy reserves. That it is selfish of him to be here. He says I need to use all my strength to get better. I make him promise to visit me soon.

  Sleazy leaves with my dad. I’m left with Pixie.

  “That was so sweet,” she purrs. I have the strange thought again that my dad never even knew Pixie was in the room with us. But all goes dark and I’m locked inside my mind again. I hate it. I hate it! HATE IT!

  16. Reality is so Relative

  “I don’t understand.” I pound my feet on the white floor. “What are you not telling me?” I ask Ghost. He and I are back in that strange antiseptic room he supposedly created to facilitate visits with my dad in cyberspace. But when I try to leave, the white walls shift away from me, making it impossible to get out of this freaking place. “Why? Why can’t I leave?”

  “We don’t know,” he says.

  “We? Who are we? Did my dad even know Pixie was in the room with us?” I am so confused now. I don’t know if it is due to the drugs I’m obviously receiving in the real world or something more sinister in this version of virtual reality. I feel so foggy, so disoriented.

  Ghost slinks around me in circles. It’s a damn good imitation of a house cat. But he is no cat, and all of this just irritates me.

  “Ghost, what is going on? Am I dying?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in that reality with you.”

  “There’s just the one reality,” I snap at him. “Can’t you ask Pixie or something? Would Doc know?”

  “Doc is sick, didn’t you hear? Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, but he visited me. So how could he be sick?”

  “You are sick,” he argues. “And are you sure it was him?” He is so irritating.

  “What do you mean?” Now I’m really confused. Doc was here with me. We spoke. Right? My heads ache—my snakes and eels feel what I feel.

  “I don’t know. I live only in The Far Cinct,” he says cryptically.

  I’m so annoyed with all of them that I want to scream. I rush the elusive wall again, but it just flows around me, reconstituting my prison, so that I’m back in its center. “How do I get out of here?” I yell.

  Ghost rubs ag
ainst my leg. I can feel his silky fur catching on the small scales of my ankles. It’s weird. But I’m starting to give up on the whole concept of weird—what is even normal here in a virtual world? What are the rules? I never bothered to learn the rules. I never had time to learn them. I inhale, breathing in the suffocating whiteness, pushing my rebellious green out. Ghost approves—I can feel the vibrations generated by his deep purring. It all feels so real. Alien, but real. So many computational cycles are being used to keep me off balance. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter—all of details in the virtual worlds have been maintained at a high level of fidelity even for the general population for years now. Dad said that this hyper-reality was one of the reasons he didn’t want me to spend too much time out here. He said something about PRDS—psychosomatic reality distortion syndrome—that was being diagnosed left and right among the very young and the very old. It was something about the brain being too flexible—or not flexible enough—to deal with the surrealism of the modern virtual worlds. Places like our local cyber arcade were specifically created as a safe sandbox for people to learn how to operate in made-up places like these, to help develop intuition about how things work out here. I remember reading about children falling off buildings in reality because they thought they could fly. Restrictions on the use of cyber environments happened soon after. Not that I cared at the time. Dad filled my life with real world experiences. He was so insistent. We went to a real park or a zoo almost every weekend. That’s a real park with real flora and a real zoo with real fauna, not some cyber zoo-nootropic ride experience.

  My mind is racing. I stop myself. Why am I thinking about all this stuff? I shake my head, and my snakes hiss my frustration. I look around. I want to sit back down. I need to get a grip. But the chairs are gone now. Did I move this whole room over by assaulting the walls, leaving the chairs behind? Somewhere out there are three antiseptic white armchairs. Does it even make sense to think like this? I hear distant bells, like a church at midnight.

  “Ghost?” It sounds like a whimper.

  “You’ll be all right, Jude.”

  He comes closer and starts to grow. Bigger and bigger. His body is changing to assume a more humanoid form. He is becoming a human with cat characteristics, a man with the head of a cat. His eyes are human now. He is able to smile at me and pull me into a hug. My snakes don’t mind, but the eels pull away. Why can’t my body animals agree on when they like Ghost?

  “I want my dad,” I say and feel like such a little girl.

  “He’s trying to save you. He needs to be back there, in the hospital.”

  “Is that where I am?” I didn’t know. I thought I was in some lab. Glass coffin? Was that real? I feel like I’m losing my mind. “Where is Claudia?” Even saying her name sends an electric chill up my virtual spine.

  “I don’t have a way to track her when she’s not here,” Ghost tells me. That makes sense. How would he know? But that is a real vulnerability—she might be trying to kill me even now. Right now. Now!

  “I think she was the one who exposed me to your molecule,” I say.

  “Yes.” I feel him nod. He is still holding me. Holding me up, really.

  “You know?” My voice is weak.

  “Of course. She’s the only one who has full access to my old research.”

  “What about Doc’s dad? Does he know?”

  “I assume he suspects.”

  “Then me, and Doc, and Pixie, and Sleazy, and Slick, we were all exposed by her?” I know that Doc and Pixie were—Doc told me. I’m guessing about the other two.

  “I don’t know.” But the way he says it makes me pull away and try to read the expression on his half-cat face. He tries to turn away, but my snakes force him to look me in the eyes. Good snakes. They coil and intertwine, basking in my silent approval. “I live here, remember?” he says. “I only know what happens in this world. And only for the last few years. I was very lost when Doc found me.”

  “So Doc said.” I look at Ghost, trying to understand what he is not telling me. What he is not…

  “I only know what’s here,” he repeats.

  My mind races. I try to decipher what he means. Ghost only knows me, Doc, and Doc’s buddies through interactions with us in the cyber world. And those guys are all cats to him. They are all cats to him! It hits me—Ghost only knows what Doc and his friends tell him. I know Doc as a panther and a kid. I’ve met both, interacted with both. Ghost only knows the panther.

  “I’ve never met Pixie or Sleazy or Slick outside,” I say. Ghost nods. “I know that I’m real. I know that Doc is real. But I don’t know about his friends, not really.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “But Doc said they were his friends from school.” I’m still missing a piece of the puzzle.

  “Do all students attend your school in person?”

  “Of course not! Some live too far away—” Oh. I feel cold. My head spins. I don’t know what is real. Who is real? Did my dad see Pixie in this room? I slide down to the floor. The room is spinning. I don’t have enough air. I gulp for more, but it feels like I’m inhaling the whiteness off the walls. It coats my lungs in thick, viscous mucous. I try to spit out the walls, but they close in. It’s too tight. I can’t breathe.

  17. Wake Up

  “Wake up, Jude. Please wake up.” The words dance around my ears, but I can’t seem to comprehend what they mean. It takes time to absorb each individual word and twirl it around in my mind before it lights up with meaning.

  “I’m up.” I open my eyes. It’s still black, blank. I blink, trying to push away the darkness. “Ghost?”

  “Your connection got disrupted,” he explains. I sense panic in his voice. “But you’re back.”

  “I can’t see,” I say. I try to stay calm—one of us has to.

  “Try using your vision menu.”

  I cateye—I’m good at that by now—and the map app pops up. I can see that! That’s a relief. There’s no information on the map, but no matter. An empty map is better than empty blankness.

  “Try using some other eyes,” Ghost suggests helpfully.

  I scroll through the menu: X-Ray vision, Night Sight, Lazer Glance, Ghost Seekers, Fireballs, MalSpy, CatEyes, Baby Blues, AnimEye, Fireworks, Stars… Some options are just so lame.

  “Try the snake vision again,” he says.

  I find SnakeEyes and immediately get overwhelmed by dozens of points of view—the white room from many angles. So, we are still in here. Damn.

  “I can see now,” I say. I make all my snakes look at Ghost. It’s still disorienting, but at least we are all paying attention to the same thing.

  “Good,” he nods. He is back in his regular cat shape. I am lying on the floor—I didn’t notice my prone position when I was blind. My proprioception—my sense of my body’s position in space—is all screwed up.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “We were talking and then we weren’t,” he says, particularly unhelpfully. But I can sense how disoriented he is himself. He obviously has no idea what just happened.

  “Well, I’m back now,” I say. No, not really: I still can’t see via my normal avatar eyes. Of course, normal is a silly concept out here. But still, things had changed and I don’t know why. “We need to get out of here, Ghost. We need to find out what’s going on. We need to know which of Doc’s friends are really real.”

  He nods his dark gray, furry head and walks to the closest wall. It slides away from him but remains solid—or as solid as anything is out here in virtual space. I watch him make several orbits around the room. The walls morph as he walks and fuse back to keep us cocooned inside. Suddenly, Ghost jumps at the wall, his claws out. It startles me; my snakes hiss at him. But the wall just flows back and he drops to the ground, flipping in the air to land on all four paws. It’s a graceful catlike move, but I can see that Ghost is discombobulated.

  “We need to think outside the box here,” I say then laugh. I didn’t mean to make a joke.
But it breaks the tension and Ghost laughs too—a strange bark-like laugh.

  “What do you propose?” he asks when we get hold of ourselves again.

  “Well…” I say, thinking at the same time. I’ve always been good at thinking on my feet. I get off the floor and stand up, hoping it would help the process now. Another pun—my mind is a mysterious organ. “How did you get in here?” I ask.

  “When?”

  This is stupid, but I let him get away with it.

  “Before.”

  “The first time, I met you out on the street,” he says.

  “I remember.”

  His tail brushes my hand, and my eels get a thrill. Sick creatures.

  “I knew you would be there and there you were.”

  “You never saw me arrive?” I ask.

  “No. I found you already walking down the street.”

  That sounds roughly right. Of course I am in a coma and seem to pop in and out of the virtual world at random. Well, it’s random to me. Is someone pulling out my plugs in the real world?

  “Then I got notice that you were in need of a safe place to meet your dad, so I built this room for you,” Ghost says.

  “Well, if you built it, break it.” That seems like a reasonable answer to me.

  “Someone has added security.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t have the codes.”

  “Can you hack into it? Aren’t you good at this sort of thing?” I ask.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I don’t understand why he is hesitating. What’s the danger? I need him more assertive, bolder. “Something bad has already happened, Ghost,” I remind him. “My connection doesn’t seem to be very stable. I keep coming in and out of the cyberspace. It’s frustrating. I’m in a coma and can’t communicate. It’s scary. Please find a way of getting me out of here.”

  His feline features change from uncertain to grim.

  I guess I approve.

  “I’ll try.”

  A humming fills the room and Ghost divides. First, there are two of him. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Then many more. I lose count—there are so many Ghosts that I hardly have space to stand. And they continue to multiply. Double? The walls of the room expand and expand, trying to accommodate an insane number of dark gray cats. I want to ask him what he is doing, but I don’t even know how. My ears pop—there’s just too many of us in here. The volume can’t hold us, but more and more cats flood the space. My snakes extend to their fullest height, standing straight up on top of my head. This gives me an extra three feet of perspective—a periscope over a sea of multiplying cats. My subcutaneous eels bunch together deep in my chest. I guess one cat is good, zillions not so much. I feel pressure. The cats are now up to my chin, to my blind eyes, above my head.